"It's a special award and an honor for me. But I say to myself that I'm just too young to have that prize named after me. But I think in just a few years time the prize will be renamed after Roger Federer, because he's already got it so many times..." - Stefan Edberg on the Sportsmanship Award. Read the interview

The third part of our English anticipations of "När vi var bäst", the book on the Golden Age of Swedish tennis, is focused on Stefan Edberg.

In this last excerpt of our "trilogy", Mats Holm and Ulf Roosvald take us back to Stefan Edberg's final Grand Slam triumph, the 1992 US Open.

The chapter called "Artist in a hairshirt" emblematically starts with a Tony Pickard quote. At the beginnings of his collaboration with Stefan, Tony was very unhappy with his pupil's hangdog mood every time things started to go the wrong way.

Winning his sixth Major trophy in gutsy style, the Swede showed he had learned his coach's lesson.

The second part of our English anticipations of "När vi var bäst", the book on the Golden Age of Swedish tennis, is focused on Mats Wilander.

Mats Wilander at the French Open in 1982

The excerpt from the chapter "Nice guys always win", that you can download at the link below, mainly deals with Sweden's second Davis Cup triumph, taken in 1984 at the Scandinavium in Gothenburg against the powerful American team of world number 1 John McEnroe and number 2 Jimmy Connors.

Revealing some interesting behind-the-stage episodes, authors Mats Holm and Ulf Roosvald identify the key of Sweden's growing success in team spirit. Against a US side undermined by internal rivalries and dislikes, the "gang of the nice guys", made up by three top ten players and an 18-year-old Stefan Edberg, had an unexpectedly easy way to victory.

Sweden was no longer a one-man team, as nine years before with Borg. Björn had shown the way to his followers, a group of buddies in which Grand Slam champion Mats Wilander had a role of "first among equals".

Starting from this Sunday, STE...fans is proud to share some exclusive English anticipations of "När vi var bäst"(When we were the best), the book on the Golden Age of Swedish tennis by Mats Holm and Ulf Roosvald that is quickly becoming a best seller in Sweden.

Björn Borg with his coach and Sweden's captain Lennart Bergelin just after the 1975 Davis Cup triumph

The house that holds the rights of the volume, Kontext Agency, is still pursuing the chance of an English language edition and, in order to raise international attention around this extraordinary work, chose right us to publish some English excerpts that would serve as an appetizer for a worldwide audience.

The book will be internationally called "Grand Slamers - the lives of Björn Borg, Stefan Edberg & Mats Wilander".

We thought it would be intriguing to share the anticipations in three parts, dedicating one to each of the protagonists of the Swedish Legend, starting from Björn Borg today to arrive to Stefan Edberg in a crescendo of interest (from our perspective, of course.)

Stefan Edberg interviewed at the passive house conference in Hannover in 2012

On the tennis court, Stefan Edberg was number one for several years. Today, the Swede is reaching top scores with his own indoor sports center. As the first of its kind, the “Södra Climate Arena,” located in Edberg’s hometown of Växjö, was built in 2012 according to the highly energy efficient Passive House Standard.

New monitoring results not only confirm the low consumption values of the facility, but the heating demand during the first two years of operation was even lower than anticipated, as stated in a report by Swedish energy consultant Simone Kreutzer. A user survey also indicates a high level of satisfaction with the comfortable conditions inside the hall.

According to the operator, the building functions almost entirely without any active heating or cooling. Despite this, the indoor temperature is a consistent 18°C (approximately 64˚F) both in winter and summer.

from HD.seby Björn Hellberg translated into English by Mauro Cappiello

Journalists Mats Holm and Ulf Roosvald provide us with a 250 page long and fact-filled book about the Swedish sport's probably most successful era of all time: the age when stars Björn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg gave tennis competitors a choral fright.

The fact that Offside is behind "When we were the best" guarantees itself for quality. Namely there's no one working or cooperating at Offside who doesn’t master their own subject.

And in fact this informed and well-written volume gives us a faithful account about the long and glittering era of domination by the blue and yellow colours ranging from individual tournaments to the Davis Cup.

ATP's official computer rankings were introduced in the autumn of 1973, and, since then, a total of 25 players topped the list. Amazingly enough, three of the early eight world number ones were from Sweden - a somewhat unlikely hindsight, for one of the globally largest sports.

Some may think that Novak Djokovic and wife Jelena named their baby Stefan as a tribute to tennis great Stefan Edberg, whom Djokovic looked up to while growing up. Edberg is now coaching Roger Federer. Naming a child is a serious business. For Novak and Jelena, they thought long and hard to find the right name for their little bundle of joy. The new parents reached back to their deep historic roots and chose a name that is well-known yet not as frequently used as baby names.

Novak told the Telegraph Sport that the reason why they chose the name Stefan for their baby is because it has a significant symbolism in their country. The Serb said that the name was very popular to their country's first royals, dated all the way back to the 12th century.

According to Novak, he and his wife didn't have to fight about the baby's name because they reached an easy consensus on it. Like Novak, Jelena is fond of symbolic representations. He said that both of them like to talk about interesting philosophical issues.

Marin Cilic, Grigor Dimitrov, Roger Federer and Kei Nishikori will compete for the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award, a prize that goes to "the player who, throughout the year, conducted himself at the highest level of professionalism and integrity, who competed with his fellow players with the utmost spirit of fairness and who promoted the game through his off-court activities."

While waiting for the winner (voted by fellow players) to be announced before the ATP World Tour Finals in London, in this post we want to celebrate all the contenders with a video of their top on-court sportsmanship moment of the year.

Stefan Edberg beat Yannick Noah in the final of the 1986 Swiss Indoors

Basel was one of the most successful tournaments for Stefan Edberg. He won three times there, in 1985, 1986 and 1988, and played two finals, losing in 1989 to Jim Courier in five sets and in 1993 to Michael Stich in four sets.

You will find lots of wonderful moments related to Stefan in the video below that was published on Youtube by the official website of the tournament some time ago and collects fantastic highlights of the history of the event (until 2012).

The one starting tomorrow will be the 45th edition of the Swiss indoors and we simply wish that all the long-time stages of the ATP World Tour would host a clip like this on their websites. (mc)

Italian daily sports paper "La Gazzetta dello Sport" launched a great initiative for all the fans of vintage and contemporary tennis. "I grandi del tennis ai raggi X" (Tennis greats under X-rays) is a collection of 22 volumes dedicated to the most important protagonists of the sport, on both men's and women's sides, from the 80's up to now.

The books, in pocket-size format, will be available every Monday at an extra of € 4,99 plus the price of the daily paper issue (€ 1,40), but the first volume, dedicated to John McEnroe, will be sold on Monday October 30th at an extra price of just 1 euro.